Leaving Atlanta (26 page)

Mama put her arms around me and hugged me to her chest. Her body smelled like talcum powder. I took a deep breath of it before
I pushed her way.

“You mashing my face. It hurts.”

She drew back and we did our crying on opposite sides of our couch.

When I got home from school, Mama had put the Christmas tree up. I know my life ain’t a TV show where they go out in the woods
and chop down a tree and they put the ornaments on one by one saying “This one from Granny” and “Remember this special angel
we got in Paris?” But still, me and Mama have this little thing we do. She is the one who puts the tree together, but I hand
her the branches one by one and she lets me do the ornaments however I like.

But she snuck and did it by herself while I was gone to school. I opened up the door and it was standing in the corner flashing
on and off like the lights in a liquor-store window.

Mama was sitting at the kitchen table smoking cigarettes. The spearmint-smoke smell of Kools was like an old friend came back.
Mama hadn’t touched her cigs in two weeks, since that day she slapped me across the face. She threw away the rest of the pack
she had been working on and the lighter too, like it was the cigarettes that made her lose her temper, the same as whiskey
makes people mean.

She didn’t turn when I opened the door. She kept smoking with her eyes closed like she was really concentrating.

“Mama,” I said, “you put the tree up?”

She nodded. “It’s December.” Her eyes didn’t look right. They were wet and swole like she was coming down with a sty, or maybe
the pink eye.

“I woulda helped you with the tree,” I mumbled. “Like always.”

She carefully tapped her ashes into a bottle cap. “Sweet Pea, sit down and let me talk to you.” Mama touched the chair next
to her.

I sat on the one across the table, the one Uncle Kenny ripped open with a bottle opener that was in his back pocket. We fixed
it with some magic tape Mama ordered off the Channel Seventeen. The seam was supposed to be invisible but I could always tell
where it was at.

“Ray called.” Mama looked hard at me, trying to see past my eyes into my brain.

“What he want?” I pushed up the edge of the tape with my fingernail. It was gooey like bubblegum.

“He wants you to come to South Carolina.”

“For the summer?” The tape was between my fingers now. I could snatch it all the way off if I wanted to.

She shook her head and sucked on the cigarette. The bottle cap was full already so she let the ashy part build up on the end.
If I breathed just a little hard it would fall into her glass of orange juice.

“What for, then?”

“He wants you to stay up there for a good little while. At least until this mess is over.” Mama nodded over at a stack of
newspapers.
TERROR ON ATLANTA’S SOUTHSIDE
. She said it like we know just when that would be. Like the child murderer called up Mayor Jackson and said, “Oh, I plan
to stop snatching kids on the fourth of July,” or something like that.

“But, Mama,” I said. “They could be killing kids
forever!
Mayor Jackson’s already offering a hundred-thousand-dollar reward. Even still, kids coming up missing almost every week.”

Mama nodded her head like she was listening to me. “That’s true.”

I thought she was seeing my side. “And anyway, it’s just boys getting killed mostly. So ain’t really no reason for me to go
away.”

Her ashes fell off into her glass. She looked down at it sad, like she had really wanted to drink that juice. “What about
those two girls? I heard one of their mothers speak at the tenant meeting.”

“What she say?”

“She said maybe you should go on up to South Carolina with your daddy.”

“No she didn’t,” I said, easing more tape up.

“No,” Mama said. “I didn’t speak to her directly. But when she got through talking, I called Ray back and told him alright.”
She put her glass up to her mouth before she remembered the ashes.

“But, Mama, I got things to do right here. I can’t just move to North Carolina.”

“South Carolina,” she said, like that made a difference.

“But what about my friend?” I said soft. “What if something happened? How I’m going to know about it?”

She made a confused face. “Delvis’ll be right here when you get back.”

“Not Delvis,” I raised my voice. “My friend what’s missing.”

Mama looked like she had forgot all about that. “I didn’t know you were that tight,” she said. She reached across the table
like maybe she was going to touch me, but she didn’t. Her hand just stayed in the middle of the table.

It was hard to explain how I felt so close with someone after just a week. That’s how long me and Rodney actually talked to
each other. So maybe we wasn’t best friends. But if we had more time, we coulda got tight. I could tell it was coming like
how you can smell sweet rain on its way on a hot afternoon.

And if me and Mama was tight, she would already know how I was feeling. It would be like when I was little, and she could
look at me when I was tired and say, “You sleepy?” just from the sight of me. Now me and her just getting looser and looser.
Like when the elastic give out on the waist of a pair of pants. They just keep sliding off until you end up naked.

“We was friends, Mama,” I said. “I need to be nearby to find out what happened.”

“I’ll call you if there’s news,” she said.

But I needed to be there. Right there. Not just on the line. Ray lived on the other end of a phone and he wasn’t no daddy
to me. How could I be a friend to Rodney from through the telephone? If God worked a miracle and found him safe, how could
I be in South Carolina? And if he was dead, I needed to be there to see him buried in the ground. When Granddaddy passed away,
they kept him in the funeral home for nine days while we waited for Uncle Edward to get train fare from Detroit. They said
Uncle Ed needed to be there so he could rest. I asked Mama if they was talking about Uncle or Granddaddy and she said, “Both.”

“Maybe I could go and stay with Granny,” I said. Macon wasn’t too far away. “They not killing kids in Macon.” Granny reminds
us about this every time she call over here. I yanked loose more tape.

Mama dropped the cigarette stump in the orange juice with a sizzle. She pulled out another one. “No ma’am. You not going to
Macon.
Last
thing you need is to stay with
Mama.
She’ll have you sitting up in church all day, every day. Can’t nothing good happen in Macon, Georgia.”

“But you from Macon.” I had pulled the tape far enough back that the stuffing jumped out.

“That’s true.”

“Ray from Macon.”

“He not there now,” she said. “Your daddy ain’t crazy. He was out of Macon on the first thing smoking when we finished high
school. He took his diploma like relay racers take that baton.” She turned her face to the ceiling and blew white smoke straight
up.

“Where did he go?”

“College,” she said. “He used to write letters at first. Then after a while he just wrapped the money orders in a clean sheet
of paper. No note.”

She smiled a little and shook her head, staring off at the Christmas tree. I was near enough to touch her. I smelled her soap
and lotion. “Can’t I just stay here? I’ll be safe.”

She put her hands on my shoulders, like she was going to pull me into a hug. But she just squeezed my shoulders and spoke
slow and careful.

“It’s more than just safety, Sweet Pea. Ray
got
things. He send money every month. That’s more than a lot of them do and I respect that. But what he really got, he can’t
fit in a envelope.”

I thought she was talking about hugs, kisses, and mushy stuff. “I don’t need to go all the way to South Carolina for that,”
I said.

“How else you gonna get it?”

“From you?”

She was tugging on her blue robe and something ripped. “I don’t have what Ray and them got. He teach at a college. If you
staying with him, ain’t no way you not going to get to go.”

“Well, we live nearby to a college, right here.” I passed the iron gates of Spelman College every time we walked to the store.

Mama touched her side through the hole in her robe. “Sweet Pea, look at me.”

I turned my face in the right direction but locked my eyes at the Christmas tree behind her head.

“Octavia.” She called my given name.

I looked at her face for real this time. The hot-comb scar on her forehead was healing up bright pink. I watched her lips
red with lipstick and brown from smoke.

“Ray wants to give you something real. It’s a shame that fourteen kids had to die before he offered it. But now he got his
hand out and you don’t have no choice but to grab it.”

But there was too a choice. All she had to do was call Ray and say
No way José. You not taking my baby.
And then Ray would be the one with no choice but to back up.

Mama didn’t unplug the Christmas tree before she went to work. It flashed on and off like a silent alarm. I put my hand on
the TV to cut it on, but then I changed my mind. I was tired of dead kids, search parties, and reward money. If I never saw
Monica Kaufman again, it would be too quick.

And I was mad at everybody I ever met in my whole life. Mad at Jashante for bringing bad luck to our neighborhood. I was mad
at Mama for putting up the stupid tree by herself, for handing me over to Ray like a two-dollar gift swap. And she the one
who sent Kenny away. I kicked the Christmas tree and one blue glass ornament landed near my bare foot. The lights kept up
the on and off. I wanted to pitch a real fit like white girls on TV, throwing dishes against the wall, hollering and cussing
between each crash. If I was a white girl, I would chuck a cereal bowl across the kitchen, cussing at Kenny for getting himself
kicked out, for putting his hands everywhere when he tickled me. I might break a whole shelf of glasses screaming at Rodney
for sharing his candy with me and getting hisself snatched two days later. And last I would destroy Mama’s green punch bowl,
cussing at myself for being too stupid to see that nothing lasts. That people get away from you like a handful of sweet smoke.

I turned my eyes to the ornament on the floor. I put my foot on top of it. Lightly. The bottom part of my foot bent easy over
the curve. I pressed down a little bit. The glitter scratched the soft space on my sole. Then I pushed with my whole weight.
The glass broke with a solid crunch. It wasn’t the same as destroying a whole cabinet full of china, but it was enough.

It hurt. I hopped on one leg to the couch and examined my foot. It was dark in the room except for the Christmas lights, but
I could make out a piece of blue glass sticking out. I pinched it with two fingers and yanked. The blood came then.

Walking carefully with one hand on the wall, I limped to the bathroom to tend to the wound I could see.

Sometimes, I have too much on my mind and I need somebody to help me think about it. On the last day of school before Christmas,
I went down to the second-grade class to look for Mrs. Grier.

The second-graders must have had some kind of party. There was wrapping paper everywhere and little bits of candy cane mashed
into the floor. Mrs. Grier looked wore out like she had been working double shifts.

But still, when she saw me, she smiled. “Octavia! Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” I mumbled back.

She straightened her back after bending down to pick up some of the wrapping paper. “What’s troubling you, Octavia?” Mrs.
Grier always talks like a book.

I waited a second because I wanted to answer back with the same kind of words. But finally, I used my regular way of talking.
“My mama say she sending me off to stay with my daddy.”

She smiled. “For the holidays? That’s lovely.”

“No. For ever. Or at least till they catch the child killer or till I’m too old for a child killer to kill.” I started moving
the desks back into rows.

“Oh, I see.” She took off her shoes and stood in a chair to pull down a red streamer. “Where does your father live?”

“Orangeburg, South Carolina.”

“Oh? Is he affiliated with the university there?” She got down from the chair and sat in it.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what does he do?” She looked kind of worried. “I don’t know of much industry in Orangeburg.”

“He teaches at a college.”

She sat up in her seat a little bit and smiled. I knew right then that she was going to side with Mama.

“What a wonderful opportunity.”

“Opportunity for what?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I want to stay right here in Atlanta, Georgia.”

“Don’t stand so far away,” Mrs. Grier said. “Sit here. I want to tell you about when I was coming up.”

I sat down in the chair. She handed me a piece of foil-wrapped chocolate before she spoke.

“We were poor when I was a girl.” She looked at me with her eyebrows up, nodding her head a little bit. She didn’t expect
me to believe her. And it was hard to picture. First off, it was weird to think that she had been a girl before. I tried to
get it fixed in my imagination, but the best I could do was to get her real short. But even still her wavy hair was silver-white
and cheeks hung low. The poor part was harder. Mrs. Grier don’t seem like she know where the projects are at, let alone that
she used to stay there.